Kate Ferris,
Technology, novelty and modernity: Spanish perceptions of
the United States in the late nineteenth century
Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland),
Annual conference at Queen's University, Belfast, April
2008
The United States seemed new to Spanish eyes not only
because of its Nuevo mundo mantle.
It also epitomised
‘newness’ and novelty in the contemporary, ‘modern’ age
because it was a country that was constantly inventing
and
innovating
engineering,
inhabitants
in
the
fields
of
communications
were
pioneers
technology,
science,
industry.
Its
and
not
only
insofar
as
their
‘manifest destiny’ carried them to journey and populate
ever westwards, but also because they achieved firsts in
dreaming up, manufacturing and marketing products which
seemed as though they would – and indeed did – change the
way
that
people
lived.
Cities
like
Chicago
and
San
Francisco seemed to spring up and accumulate inhabitants,
not to mention the latest services, public monuments and
institutions, in a matter of a few decades.
Even natural
disasters like the fire that devastated Chicago in 1871
were no match for the American man’s capacity to invent
and
build.
innovative
Thus
and
the
United
advanced
–
States
and
appeared
young,
consequently
rich.
Millionaires like the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers
were
extreme
examples,
but
most
Americans
–
it
was
imagined – were governed by dollars, adept at commerce
and
swore
by
the
maxims
of
‘go
ahead’
and
‘time
is
money’.
Of course, behind these tropes and stereotypes of the US
as
the
archetypal
land
of
inventions,
patents
and
1
technological advancement lay nuanced understandings of
the nature of the United States’ relationship to science
and technology.
public
And, of course, a good deal of the
discourse
in
late-nineteenth-century
Spain
surrounding the image of the United States as the world’s
pioneer was guided by an over-riding feeling that Spain
would need to emulate the USA’s advances in the fields of
technology, engineering and communications in order to
‘catch up’ with the most modern of nations.
In pointing
to this discourse of the need to 'catch up', I don’t wish
to oversubscribe to the historiographical interpretation
of nineteenth century Spain as a nation lagging woefully
behind
other
western
European
nations
and
the
United
States in terms of political, socio-economic and urban
development.
and
the
The idea of Spain’s failure to modernise
underpinning
desirability
of
notion
of
modernisation
the
inevitability
according
to
an
and
ideal
blueprint laid down by Great Britain or the US, have been
challenged
and
rightly
so.
Political,
economic
and
technological development in nineteenth century Spain, as
elsewhere,
occurred
following
an
nevertheless
unevenly
inexorable
perceptibly
and
sporadically,
positivistic
taking
not
path
place.
but
Still,
a
perception of the need to ‘catch up’ with regards to
scientific
change
did
and
in
industrial
part
development
inform
the
and
thinking
contemporary political and cultural elites.
political
of
many
What’s more,
the introduction of many new scientific and technological
forms of production and communication did occur later in
Spain than, for example, in Britain, France or Germany
and
was
heavily
reliant
on
expertise,
materials
and
investment from abroad, leading some historians to label
this an episode of ‘reverse colonialism’ in the age of
imperialist expansion.
2
Although admiration, imitation and a desire to 'catch' up
is an important part of this story of Spanish imaginings
of the United States, what I'd like to stress in this
paper is the ambivalence of Spanish evaluations of the
discoveries and innovations emanating from the US and
their implications, thus locating the national narrative
of
Spanish
attitudes
towards
technological
advancement
and 'progress' within the wider fin-de-siecle ambivalence
towards
modernity.
Here,
the
paper
engages
with
the
historiography on the European fin-de-siecle crisis which
examines
the
disconcerting
and
unsettling
impact
of
innovations in technology and communications as they were
increasingly applied to daily life in the industrialised
West, and emphasises the way in which these innovations
dislocated people from what they ‘knew’ or were familiar
with.
Whilst a sense of distrust and disconcertment is
evident in the Spanish case, my research suggests that
this dislocation, fear and confusion at the encounter
with the unfamiliar coexisted with an often positive and
positivistic
Parallel
fascination
observations
with
made
by
‘novel
the
artefacts'.
historian
Bernhard
Rieger in relation to Britain and Germany led him to
conclude
halting
that
the
practical
technological
reactions
ultimately,
to
from
application
novelties,
such
far
the
changes
holding
of
back
scientific
ambivalence
facilitated
of
or
and
public
continued
technological development.
This
paper,
then,
is
concerned
with
exposing
and
understanding Spanish ambivalence towards technological
modernity, as it was seemingly embodied in the United
States, and takes as a kind of case-study one of the
principal symbols of US modernity – the railroad network
3
-
one of the most potent pieces of evidence that the
United
States
was
the
“country
whose
present
is
dreamed-of future to which many nations aspire”.
though,
I’d
like
to
briefly
run
through
the
First,
the
three
principle negative impulses which contributed to Spanish
ambivalence.
In the first place, as the century neared its end, the
tone of the Spanish press’ reporting of north American
pioneering
inventions
characterised
by
shifted
admiration
from
and
one
broadly
bemusement
to
more
critical assessments which frequently ridiculed or were
hostile to advancements in technology or communications
infrastructure in the US.
The growing intensity of the
bellicose rhetoric between the Spanish and North American
governments over the ‘Cuban question’ was echoed by a
rising open antagonism in the Spanish press towards US
inventions and innovations, not least because some of
these
inventions,
networks
such
provided
by
as
the
improved
telephones,
communications
telegraphs
and
the
railway network, might have direct military implications.
Certainly the Spanish press were quick to point out the
size,
newness
and
technological
sophistication
of
the
North American fleet, but even contraptions apparently
entirely unrelated to war were satirized as evidence of
American belligerence.
Blanco
y
Negro
In 1897, the satirical journal
published
a
cartoon
[see
figure
1]
depicting the demonstration of Edison’s phonograph – a
machine for recording and replaying sound, first patented
in 1878 – which assigned the innocuous device a combative
role.
The
being
demonstrated
prodigious
cartoon
invention”
portrayed
the
which
the
Spanish
functioning
upon
politicians
of
inspection,
“Edison’s
it
was
revealed, “is simply a cylinder which eternally repeats
4
the coarse senatorial song of” the members of the US
administration
independence
Spain.
most
and
vocal
in
in
their
their
support
hostility
for
towards
Cuban
colonial
According to the list of ‘recitals’ pinned to the
wall above the phonograph, which was patriotically laid
out
on
a
stars-and-stripes
flag,
the
phonograph’s
repertoire consisted of: firstly, an “anti-Spain speech”;
secondly,
“the
second
act
of
the
same”;
thirdly,
“a
continuation of the previous”; and, finally, “the same as
the first”.1
added
The text accompanying the cartoon defiantly
that
the
machine’s
inventor
and
machinery
general would soon have their come-uppance.
Similarly
the journal parodied the twin tropes of the US
pioneer
of
technological
progress
and
as
in
the
as the
seat
of
liberty as seductive yet illusory in this ode to the
Statue of Liberty [figure 2] whilst in July 1898, at the
height
of
the
Spanish-Cuban-American
war,
already
convinced of the hypocrisy of a nation which, it said,
professed
to
wage
war
against
Spain
“in
the
name
of
humanity and progress” but whose humanity “consists of
supplying arms to savages and in the using of dynamite
canons”
the
destroying
cutting
journal
the
the
emblems
detailed
of
transatlantic
its
how
own
cables
the
US
was
now
progressiveness
in
the
bay
by
outside
Havana. In these examples and others, Spanish satirists
tapped
into
inventions,
the
trope
machines
of
and
the
US’s
innovation
association
not
simply
with
to
disparage the perceived North American character, but,
importantly, to assert Spain’s difference – as a nation
unimpressed by such modern machines of mass production –
in
the
face
of
the
increasing
enmity
and
military
superiority of the US.
1
Blanco y Negro 29 May 1897 p.16.
5
Secondly, the vision of progress and modernity embodied
by the US’s drive for mechanisation and technological
improvement was held up by many as undesirable because it
represented the antithesis of Spanish predilections for
the
arts,
world.
and
the
aesthetically
pleasing
and
the
natural
In this vision, progress/modernity appeared ugly
unnatural
and
given
should not covet it.
industrial
progress
its
unattractiveness,
Spain
The trappings of technological and
were
perceived
to
spoil,
if
not
actively harm, the natural life and landscape of the US –
telegraph poles, for example, were “useful, no more, no
less”
whilst
rapid
cities”
like
San
“modern
towers
urbanisation
Francisco
of
threw
and
Babel”
up
“improvised
especially
built
Chicago,
according
to
an
architectural lexicon that knew only the big, the brash
and the bold.
the
official
Rafael Puig y Valls, in Chicago as part of
delegation
to
the
Worlds
Fair
in
1893,
wondered if the city had been constructed “by giants and
for a superior race who can conceive only the monumental
and the grand”.
Size, comfort and utility were, it was
said, the “fin primordial” of north American cities.
The
futuristic
and
urban
planning
solutions
imagined
–
sometimes implemented – in the US seemed thoroughly alien
to the nature of Spanish cities.
For example, Puig y
Valls was quick to dismiss what was an outlandish and
surely improbable plan (but one which he could imagine
“it is quite possible that it will soon be realised”)
that
was
designed
to
improve
Chicago’s
transportation
network: a road and walk-way system based on three tiers;
a subterranean level for “passengers”; street level for
carriages; and “a third at the first floor level” for
pedestrians.2
This imagined future – or past future – as
it never came to fruition tells us much about the past
2
Puig y Valls R Viaje á América p. 54.
6
present in which it was conceived and the parameters of
the possibilities imaginable at that time. As improbable
as the fantasy-transport plan might seem, in the late
nineteenth century it seemed perfectly realisable – but,
crucially, only in America and certainly not in Spain.
The
Chicagoan
vision
of
a
tri-level
city
transport
network seemed to Puig y Valls a solution that would be
uttely inappropriate in Spain, as it “completely disrupt
all the views of our municipal architecture, engineering
and policy” and would threaten “the cities of art which
are
the
pride
of
the
latin
race
and
the
most
inspitational models for the saxon races”.3
The
third
component
of
this
ambivalence
towards
technological modernity, is the ambivalence prompted by
the
risks
that
contemporary
itself.
innovations
ways
of
life
seemed
and
to
very
pose
both
literally
to
to
life
To illustrate this, and the other aspects of
ambivalence already highlighted, I’d like to discuss in
greater
detail
the
US
railroad
network,
as
Spanish
attitudes towards the railroad network capture this sense
of ambivalence caught between admiration, imitation and
discomfort at the threat to values of beauty and art and
risk to life and limb involved in becoming modern.
The
extension of the ‘trans-continental’ railway network was
emblematic
dominate
of
the
nature,
‘annihilation
of
perceived
distance
space
North
American
and
even
time
by
time’
as
contemporaries often put it.
–
drive
to
or
the
Marx
and
This “iron belt”,4 which
from 1869 was boasted to connect the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts, was upheld as singularly representative of the
North American way of life in its ‘unnatural’ speeding of
3
4
Ibid. p. 55.
Bustamente y Campuzano J Del Atlantico al Pacifico p. 424.
7
communications
information
and
and
the
ideas,
transfer
in
its
of
people,
dedication
to
goods,
comfort
(though only for the few who could afford it), and in its
facilitating of the creation and accumulation of wealth.
The
railroad
network
also
symbolised
the
price
of
progress: these costs were paid by the natural landscape,
“tamed” by the laying of miles of track and the
make-
shift towns that punctured the American wilderness, which
in any case was lost as a
traversed
but
not
blurred backdrop of space
directly
experienced
by
train
passengers; by the workers in the railway and associated
industries who were moved to protest at their low pay and
working conditions in wildcat and general strikes; and by
the
many
victims
who
died
in
the
horrific
railway
accidents and derailments of the industry’s infant years.
Thus, the railways seemed to encapsulate the best and
worst aspects of American modernity.
From the mid-century Spain heavily invested capital and
energy in developing its own railroad system, according
to
some
scientific
contemporaries
projects.
to
the
The
detriment
results,
of
however,
other
were
disappointing: the dependence upon investment, scientific
and
engineering
expertise,
building
materials
and
manufactured products from abroad, primarily from France,
in order to construct Spain’s rail network meant that it
has been characterised at best as “a token of progress”
and at worst as an episode of ‘reverse colonialism’.5
Still, “railways fever” had hit Spain: the conviction
remained
“barometer
strong
of
a
that
the
country’s
railways
wealth
and
were
its
the
best
degree
of
The efforts to legitimate Spain as a progressive modern nation to rank alongside the leading imperial
powers of the day required the importing of external capital, goods and knowledge, thus meaning that any
profits were exported in the opposite direction – a process akin to colonisation. This argument is put
forward by Alberto Elena and Javier Ordonez in idem “Science, Technology and the Spanish Colonial
Experience in the Nineteenth Century”, passim.
5
8
prosperity” and by this measure the United States “is the
most
advanced
material
nation
prosperity
given
of
its
its
contribution
inhabitants”,
to
the
boasting
the
“fabulous sum” of 116,864 kilometres of railroad compared
with Spain’s paltry 5,226 kilometres.6
Virtually every Spaniard who wrote of his or her time in
the USA in the late nineteenth century wrote of their
admiration
for
the
North
American
railway
system.
Indeed, for many, the very first thing they described in
their accounts was their astonishment at the advanced
technology, extension and speed of the US’s railways.7
On setting foot on the North American mainland during the
first Spanish royal visit to the ‘new world’, Princess
Eulalia’s
first
letter
to
her
mother,
Isabel
II,
recounted how the train that had carried her along the
Pennsylvania railroad from New Jersey to Washington had
covered “in five hours a distance which is clearly the
same as that which separates Madrid and San Sebastián.”
This,
she
noted,
meant
travelling
at
a
“undoubtedly
vertiginous” speed, however the advanced design of the
railroad and carriages meant that one felt “less shaken
than in ours”.8
were
a
Comments on the rapidity of the railways
reflection
of
the
significance
placed
on
acceleration and the most profitable use of time in the
North American psyche.
If the phrase ‘to kill time’ was
used “so frequently” in Spain, Princess Eulalia noted,
its polar opposite – ‘to save time’ – was the watchword
of North Americans.
Juan
Bustamente
y
Campuzano
identified
the
same
El Abolicionista 30 June 1876 ‘Los ferro-cariles en España’.
This was the case, for example, with Bustamente y Campuzano’s Del Atlantico al Pacifico.
8 Letter from Princess Eulalia to Queen Isabel II, 19 May 1893, published in Giménez Ortiz A ed. Cartas a
Isabel II. 1893.
6
7
9
characteristic during his travels in the US, which he
described as “their tireless activity which doesn’t allow
for even a moment’s rest”.
The American way of life was
an unceasing to-ing and fro-ing, “a frantic race, for
which
they
make
use
of
every
possible
impossible – means of locomotion”.
–
and
even
The perception that
the railways shortened distances and accelerated time –
or rather altered the subjective perception of the spacetime
continuum
American
–
was
railways;
experience
of
rail
of
course
not
such
tropes
travel
since
limited
had
the
to
North
informed
the
mid-century,
Britain and France as in the United States.
in
What’s
more, the notion of rail travel diminishing space was
complicated, even more so in the US, by the fact that the
railroads
also
amplified
space,
in
that
they
made
accessible - and made American - previously inaccessible
or
remote
areas,
at
the
same
time
as
subjective distances between known points.9
relationship
between
the
railroads
shortening
However, the
and
notions
of
acceleration, space and time in the USA is significant;
after
all,
it
was
the
arrival
of
the
railways
that
brought about the standardisation of time itself in the
US as elsewhere.
time
zones
Still, the division of the US into four
in
1889
in
practice
didn’t
immediately
alleviate the chaos that had been caused by each railroad
company
running
clocks:
still
their
in
trains
1893
a
according
Spaniard
to
different
observed
that
“timetables are established in North America purely for
the
pleasure
whatsover”.10
Walter
of
never
taking
any
notice
of
them
The American railroads arguably exemplified
Benjamin’s
assertion
that
‘mechanical
Schivelbusch points out that the American railroads differed from their European counterparts in this
respect, given that they opened up access to previously unsettled land rather than, as was mostly the case in
Europe, replacing roads, tracks, rivers and canals that up to then served as the principal means of
connecting settlements. Schivelbusch W The Railway Journey p. 89.
10 Puig y Valls R Viaje á América p. 43; see also Schivelbusch W The Railway Journey p. 44.
9
10
reproduction’ led to standardisation at the expense of
uniqueness and of genuine aesthetic experience: Puig y
Valls experienced the train journey from Salt Lake City
to
San
Francisco
as
a
monotonous
succession
of
settlements “without change in colour and form […]; the
verandah
column,
the
door,
the
frame,
the
arch,
the
eaves, all the same or similar, recalling the eternal
machine, constantly moving day and night, delivering to
market the same parts, from a single, monotonous mould,
capable of killing all artistic sentiment in even the
most
gifted
being.”11
The
North
American
landscape,
constantly reproduced, and the train’s passengers, like
the goods it carried, became commodities devoid of their
particular context, their singularity and therefore of
their ‘aura’.12
The
North
modern
American
railways
preoccupation
precision;
for
those
did
with
who
not
speed
could
just
and
represent
a
technological
afford
it
they
also
constituted the height of modern luxury and comfort.
The
design of North American train carriages had differed
from European models since the 1830s.
North American
carriages consisted of long cars with a central aisle
dividing
seats
direction.
cramped,
unconnected
considered
In
that
could
comparison
class-divided
compartments
more
be
tilted
with
the
carriages
with
‘democratic’,
facing
allowed
to
face
European
either
model
separated
seats,
they
greater
of
into
were
mobility
and avoided the unpleasantness of sitting opposite fellow
passengers
in
embarrassed
silence,
described
Puig y Valls R Viaje á América Book II, p. 24. Benjamín W ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction’ in ed. Arendt H Illuminations New York, Schocken Books, 1968, pp. 217-242.
12 On the way in which the opening of the railroads brought about a loss of ‘aura’, in Benjamin’s terms,
through the reproduction and standardisation of landscape and even time, see Schivelbusch W The Railway
Journey pp. 41-4.
11
11
excruciatingly by George Simmel.13
The ‘democracy’ of
North American classless carriages was ended, however,
with the introduction of the first-class Pullman cars
from
1859.
The
Spanish
press
reported
widely
and
circulated illustrations of the ”palace-cars” modelled on
luxury steam-ships. The Spanish press declared them the
height
of
“luxury
simplicity
and
wealth”.14
and
elegance,
Princess
Pullman’s
very
good
own
taste
on
the
Eulalia
wagon
–
on
inside:
concurred:
to
the
travel
outside:
comfort
and
borrowing
Mr
from
Chicago
to
Niagara Falls, she declared, “it is impossible to find
greater comfort in a train; this coach in particular is
truly an apartment on wheels.”15
US
rail
network
fed
into
a
Thus the image of the
further
trope
that
often
recurred in Spanish imaginings of the US, that of the
North
American’s
creation.
aptitude
for
and
valuing
of
wealth
The railways constituted a central component
of the US’s imagined inordinate riches on many levels:
that
of
the
“riquísimos
private
citizens
bankers
of
the
and
country
investors,
of
the
Croesus”
who
formed “capitalist companies” to fund the construction of
railroads; that of the luxurious and comfortable train
carriages,
America’s
just
described,
wealthiest
which
citizens
to
permitted
travel
the
North
country
smoothly, speedily and in style; as well as that of the
wealth
commerce
generated
and
by
the
transportation
railway’s
facilitation
of
and
people
country where, after all, ‘time is money’.
goods
in
of
a
The immense
Schivelbusch identifies the difference in carriage design as arising from the fact that European carriage
designers took their lead from the stagecoach, which train travel replaced, whilst the major point of
reference for the North American design was the steam-boat, which because it (like American trains) had
to cover long distances between settled areas had to provide greater self-sufficiency and mobility for its
passengers. See Schivelbusch W The Railway Journey p. 75 for Simmel’s response to the changing cultural
experience of travel by train and pp. 98-107 for the different evolutions in carriage design.
14 La Ilustración Española y Americana 25 December 1870 ‘Estados Unidos - Ferro-carril’.
15 Letter from Princess Eulalia to Queen Isabel II, 17 June 1893, published in Giménez Ortiz A ed. Cartas a
Isabel II. 1893.
13
12
volume
of
traffic
on
North
American
railways
was
recognised as a key factor in generating the nation’s
wealth.
Because of the size and population of Spain,
Puig y Valls accepted, similarly large volumes of rail
traffic could not be expected on the peninsular.
he
thought,
a
comparison
of
“the
Still,
relationship
which
exists between the roads constructed and the railways in
the United States and that between the same elements of
traffic in Spain” would be worthwhile insofar as it would
highlight whether Spain was giving – as he suspected excessive preference to road traffic.
His supposition
was that a transport network centred upon “cheap tariffs
and high levels of traffic”, like that of the US, would
allow
not
only
the
rail
companies
but
the
nation
in
general to enjoy greater prosperity.16
There were, of course, many who were not included in the
accumulation of riches generated by the USA’s railway
industry.
most
modern
profits.
his
As Puig y Valls observed, the workers in this
of
industries
were
seldom
party
to
its
His visit to the Pullman factory left him and
fellow
delegates
impressed
by
the
owner’s
implementation of “the frank and perhaps brutal emblem of
a true yankee: “nothing for the worker and all for work”17
or in other words, “no charity, no philanthropy, just
business forever”.18
Interest in working conditions in
the factory stemmed solely from a desire to introduce
“the most advanced procedures”
to produce the highest
quality work “in calm spirits”.19
Wage cuts and poor
Puig y Valls R Viaje á América p. 216. Evidently a man of contradiction, however, Puig y Valls also
advocated that Spain should emulate some of the more protectionist policies of the US. Whilst in Salt
Lake City, he noted and “recommend[ed] á los economistas españoles” a saying posted in the city’s tram
cars that read: When you spend a dollar for foreing [sic foreign] goods you are making Utah 1.00 $ poorer” Ibid. Book
II, p. 22.
17 Ibid. pp. 216-7.
18 Ibid. p. 217.
19 Ibid.
16
13
working conditions caused North American railroad workers
to strike, most notably in 1877 and also at the Pullman
factory itself in 1894. [Colleague working on similar
questions
in
identifies
relation
railroad
to
British
perceptions
strikes/haymarket
attacks
of
US,
1886
as
point at which British workers/socialist leaders ceased
to see US as kind of ‘workers paradise’ – I need to do
more work to see if this holds true for Spanish workers –
but
the
Spanish
commentators
press
remained
and
largely
railroad workers’ plight.]
political/intellectual
unmoved
by
the
American
El Imparcial and La Epoca,
who covered the unfolding of the ‘Great Railroad Strike’
during the summer of 1877 day by day and Antonio Aguilar
y Correa, who published an account of the strikes in
1879, varied in the intensity of their criticism of the
workers
and
the
violence
of
the
strikes.
All
were
principally concerned with accounting for and containing
the
spread
of
such
‘socialism’,
now
judged
the
“preoccupation of many nations”, and with assessing the
extent to which the 1877 strikes in the US discredited
its democratic institutions and the credibility of the
“model republic”.20
The cost of the US’s railway network was paid not only by
the industry’s workers or by the despoiling of previously
pristine landscape, but could also be measured in human
lives.
Accidents
on
the
railways
–
crashes
and
derailments – took place with such frequency that rail
travel
was
gruesome
railways,
considered
details
such
as
of
the
a
dangerous
deaths
and
occupation.
mutilations
catastrophic
derailment
The
on
the
of
the
See Aguilar y Correa, Antonio, Marqués de la Vega de Armijo La huelga en los ferrocarriles de los Estados
Unidos de la América del Norte en 1877 Madrid, Eduardo Martínez, 1879; La Epoca 26-29 July 1877, 31 July
1877, 1-4 August 1877; El Imparcial 28-30 July 1877. The Spanish reaction to the 1877 railroad workers’
strike is discussed in greater detail in a subsequent chapter of this book.
20
14
Barcelona to Zaragoza postal train on 24th June 1876 which
left
14
people
dead
–
or
in
the
language
of
the
illustrated journal which reported it, left a “mountain
of pieces of metal and wood sticking out from which were
disfigured
and
broken
human
bodies”
who
let
out
“anguished cries, calls for help, exclamations of horror
and
the
groans
help” -
of
those
who
found
themselves
without
were extensively reported in all their gory
details in the Spanish press.
Thus the fascination and admiration expressed towards the
US’s advanced and expansive modern railroad network was
coupled with an awareness and fear of the dangers it
carried.
through
The “horrifying speeds” of the trains passing
the
crossing
point
of
four
railroads
between
Chicago and Niagara Falls caused Puig y Valls to shiver
at the thought that “the slightest mistake could end my
journey with tragic consequences”.21
Miguel Suarez’s
“commercial memoir” of the US published in 1876 counted
234 deaths and 1,094 injured in the year between December
1874
and
December
1875.22
Similarly
Campusano noted that derailments
Bustamente
y
were so commonplace
that they had given rise to a new verb in english, ‘to
telescope’.23
Indeed, Puig y Valls’ recognition of the
danger of rail travel proved prescient; on his journey
around the western United States after the close of the
World’s
himself.
Fair,
he
was
involved
in
a
train
accident
Journeying from San Francisco towards El Paso,
the train in which he was travelling accidentally ran
over
and
killed
two
young
railroad
workers.
Puig
y
Vall’s dismay at being caught up in a fatal rail accident
Puig y Valls R Viaje á América p. 41.
Suarez M Estados-Unidos de America. Memorias Comerciales. Dirigido al Ministerio de Estado Madrid, García y
Compañia, 1876, p. 33.
23 Bustamente y Campuzano J Del Atlantico al Pacifico p. 91.
21
22
15
was only compounded by the fact that as the young workers
lay dying, for several minutes, their fellow labourers
simply picked up their tools and resumed their work.24
Such acceptance of the dangers of the railroads, however,
was perhaps not unusual.
deaths
were
progress.
a
necessary
To some it seemed that such
sacrifice
in
the
name
of
Perhaps because the US’s present was assumed
to be Spain and the rest of Europe’s future, the attitude
of the Spaniards towards the deaths and dangers of the
railroads was predominantly one of sorrowful resignation.
Unlike
turn-of-the-century
Britain
and
Germany,
where
Bernhard Rieger has found a public discourse eager to
discuss ways of improving safety features and reducing
risk in the new aerial and naval forms of transport,
these
late-nineteenth
century
Spaniards
debated
the
causes of rail accidents – excessive speed and volume of
traffic – but [as far as I have been able to discover]
did not suggest ways in which these accidents might be
prevented, or even that they could be.25
accidents
and
unavoidable
part
risks
were
glumly
of
becoming
Rather, the
accepted
modern.
as
Bustamente
an
y
Campusano declared that modern life “is nothing but a
hard-fought battle in which everyone fights to the death”
and,
he
added,
in
the
United
States
the
prize
so
worthwhile fighting – and dying – for was the “search for
riches”.26
If modernity was a battle, then those who died
in the positivistic march towards material progress such
as
the
victims
of
rail
crashes
and
other
modern
transportation disasters, or even the financial victims
of stock market crashes became soldiers sacrificed on the
Puig y Valls R Viaje á América Book II, p.64.
On the British and German public discourse which acknowledged the inherent risks of new technologies
but was keen to find ways of minimising these dangers and making new forms of transport safer, see
Rieger B Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany pp. 53; 69-79.
26 Bustamente y Campuzano J Del Atlantico al Pacifico pp. 29-31.
24
25
16
battlefield.
And,
after
all,
Bustamente
y
Campusano
observed, when the objective has been achieved,
¿who cares for the less fortunate victims who, in the
scuffle, are left lying on the battlefield?... ¿Has much
importance ever been given, relatively speaking, to the
soldiers who perish in battle, when the battle ends in a
brilliant
victory
for
the
nation
for
whom
they
are
press
and
lost?27
To
sum
up,
the
attitude
of
the
Spanish
political/intellectual elite towards the primacy of the
United States in the fields of technology, engineering
and communications was one of ambivalence.
On the one
hand,
engendered
this
distance
image
and
of
fear:
the
United
North
States
Americans’
propensity
for
inventing and patenting novel machinery and means of
communication
was
increasingly
with
viewed
suspicion
with
and
bemusement,
hostility,
as
but
the
belligerent rhetoric between Spain and the US over the
fate
of
Cuba
potential
escalated
military
towards
war
applications
of
in
1898.
North
The
American
innovations and the evident superiority of the US in
military-technological
fields
appeared
threaten the Spanish colonial state.
to
directly
A different kind
of fear, one which was assumed to be an inevitable byproduct of the uncertainties of ‘modernity’ was prompted
by the real risks associated with modern machines, not
least with rail travel.
The prevalence of collisions,
derailments and ‘telescoping’ on the busy and complex
railroad network of the US seemed to illustrate the
unavoidable
sacrifices
that
‘battle’ to become modern.
were
required
in
the
What’s more, the correlation
made between the North American railways, inventions and
27
Ibid.
17
forms
of
urbanisation
and
both
the
accumulation
of
wealth and the ‘civilising’ of the natural wilderness
provoked
a
buildings
degree
and
of
distaste:
skyscrapers
American
designed
monumental
according
to
a
lexicon that exalted the big, the bold and the brash
were
judged
ugly,
unnatural
and
the
antithesis
Spanish aesthetic values of beauty and art.
of
The railway
barons and kings who amassed fortunes thanks to the
extension of the railway network, as well as those who
profited from the railroads in fulfilment of the ‘time
is
money’
maxim
were
viewed
with
some
aversion
and
perhaps a dash of envy. Spanish aversion to the US’s
brand of technological modernity, however, is only part
of
the
story.
Though
US
expertise
in
science
engineering, were believed to have been achieved
and
at the
expense of the arts and literature, the capacity of
North Americans to exploit their natural resources, to
find innovative solutions and to overcome the inbuilt
difficulties of their land was considered well worthy of
attention, admiration and at times imitation.
A sense
that Spain would need to emulate - or at least consider
– many of the USA’s innovations in science, engineering,
communications
infrastructure
and
urban
development
pervaded the discourse on inventions and innovations.
Furthermore, the vision of a future, powered by US-led
advances in technology was one in which Spain could and
should
share
and
participate.
optimistically
declared,
forward-looking
vision
technological
humans
to
and
harness
modern
“the
all
to
As
that
Puig
was
needed
search
for
solutions
that
forces
of
y
Valls
was
a
fundamental
would
nature”
and
allow
would
radically altar mankind’s relationship with nature, with
their work and with each other.
18
19